Yudha Scholes

My paintings are like portals into the places I study, the energetic, lush sclerophyll bush of Mount Donna Buang’s Mountain Ash forests or the mysterious River red gums and Wetlands of the Barmah State Forest.

I love to go to nature and see it more and more as a living being- the source of all life. All nourishment and beauty come from the earth, sun and the ocean and I feel revitalised in it.
  

Painting landscapes transport me to places that are peaceful and sooth my soul. However the beauty of the painted image no longer seems to tell the full story. The natural environment is under threat from anthropogenic climate change and the treacherous conditions this has ushered into our times. Science is continually revealing that we have pushed the natural environment beyond breaking point, and natural disasters are increasing in occurrence and force, resulting in a world in which we are all threatened by the rising temperature of our planet. 

This artwork conveys a subtle sense of the tension and destruction that has begun to grip our collective minds. By searing the landscape into natural materials such as wood with a laser, I am imitating that destructive force of heat that threatens our way of life. The irony of the burnt image of the natural scene, still smelling of smoke and flame, will be an arresting reflection on the precarious state we find ourselves in.